One genial morning a few days later the sun shone in across the desk of Baird while he talked to Merton Gill of the new piece. It was a sun of fairest promise. Mr. Gill’s late work was again lavishly commended, and confidence was expressed that he would surpass himself in the drama shortly to be produced.
Mr. Baird spoke in enthusiastic terms of this, declaring that if it did not prove to be a knock-out—a clean-up picture—then he, Jeff Baird, could safely be called a Chinaman. And during the time that would elapse before shooting on the new piece could begin he specified a certain study in which he wished his actor to engage.
“You’ve watched the Edgar Wayne pictures, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I’ve seen a number of them.”
“Like his work?—that honest country-boy-loving-his—mother-and-little-sister stuff, wearing overalls and tousled hair in the first part, and coming out in city clothes and eight dollar neckties at the last, with his hair slicked back same as a seal?”
“Oh, yes, I like it. He’s fine. He has a great appeal.”
“Good! That’s the kind of a part you’re going to get in this new piece. Lots of managers in my place would say ‘No-he’s a capable young chap and has plenty of talent, but he lacks the experience to play an Edgar Wayne part.’ That’s what a lot of these Wisenheimers would say. But me—not so. I believe you can get away with this part, and I’m going to give you your chance.”
“I’m sure I don’t know how to thank you, Mr. Baird, and I’ll try to give you the very best that is in me—”
“I’m sure of that, my boy; you needn’t tell me. But now—what I want you to do while you got this lay-off between pieces, chase out and watch all the Edgar Wayne pictures you can find. There was one up on the Boulevard last week I’d like you to watch half-a-dozen times. It may be at another house down this way, or it may be out in one of the suburbs. I’ll have someone outside call up and find where it is to-day and they’ll let you know. It’s called Happy Homestead or something snappy like that, and it kind of suggests a layout for this new piece of mine, see what I mean? It’ll suggest things to you.
“Edgar and his mother and little sister live on this farm and Edgar mixes in with a swell dame down at the summer hotel, and a villain tries to get his old mother’s farm and another villain takes his little sister off up to the wicked city, and Edgar has more trouble than would patch Hell a mile, see? But it all comes right in the end, and the city girl falls for him when she sees him in his stepping-out clothes.
“It’s a pretty little thing, but to my way of thinking it lacks strength; not enough punch to it. So we’re sort of building up on that general idea, only we’ll put in the pep that this piece lacked. If I don’t miss my guess, you’ll be able to show Wayne a few things about serious acting—especially after you’ve studied his methods a little bit in this piece.”
“Well, if you think I can do it,” began Merton, then broke off in answer to a sudden thought. “Will my mother be the same actress that played it before, the one that mopped all the time?”
“Yes, the same actress, but a different sort of mother. She—she’s more enterprising; she’s a sort of chemist, in a way; puts up preserves and jellies for the hotel. She never touches a mop in the whole piece and dresses neat from start to finish.”
“And does the cross-eyed man play in it? Sometimes, in scenes with him, I’d get the idea I wasn’t really doing my best.”
“Yes, yes, I know.” Baird waved a sympathetic hand. “Poor old Jack. He’s trying hard to do something worth while, but he’s played in those cheap comedy things so long it’s sort of hard for him to get out of it and play serious stuff, if you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” said Merton.
“And he’s been with me so long I kind of hate to discharge him. You see, on account of those eyes of his, it would be hard for him to get a job as a serious actor, so I did think I’d give him another part in this piece if you didn’t object, just to sort of work him into the worth-while things. He’s so eager for the chance. It was quite pathetic how grateful he looked when I told him I’d try him once more in one of the better and finer things. And a promise is a promise.”
“Still, Merton, you’re the man I must suit in this cast; if you say the word I’ll tell Jack he must go, though I know what a blow it will be to him—”
“Oh, no, Mr. Baird,” Merton interrupted fervently, “I wouldn’t think of such a thing. Let the poor fellow have a chance to learn something better than the buffoonery he’s been doing. I’ll do everything I can to help him. I think it is very pathetic, his wanting to do the better things; it’s fine of him. And maybe some day he could save up enough to have a good surgeon fix his eyes right. It might be done, you know.”
“Now that’s nice of you, my boy. It’s kind and generous. Not every actor of your talent would want Jack working in the same scene with him. And perhaps, as you say, some day he can save up enough from his wages to have his eyes fixed. I’ll mention it to him. And this reminds me, speaking of the cast, there’s another member who might bother some of these fussy actors. She’s the girl who will take the part of your city sweetheart. As a matter of fact, she isn’t exactly the type I’d have picked for the part, because she’s rather a large, hearty girl, if you know what I mean. I could have found a lot who were better lookers; but the poor thing has a bedridden father and mother and a little crippled brother and a little sister that isn’t well, and she’s working hard to send them all to school—I mean the children, not her parents; so I saw the chance to do her a good turn, and I hope you’ll feel that you can work harmoniously with her. I know I’m too darned human to be in this business—” Baird looked aside to conceal his emotion.
“I’m sure, Mr. Baird, I’ll get along fine with the young lady, and I think it’s fine of you to give these people jobs when you could get better folks in their places.”
“Well, well, we’ll say no more about that,” replied Baird gruffly, as one who had again hidden his too-impressionable heart. “Now ask in the outer office where that Wayne film is to-day and catch it as often as you feel you’re getting any of the Edgar Wayne stuff. We’ll call you up when work begins.”
He saw the Edgar Wayne film, a touching story in which the timid, diffident country boy triumphed over difficulties and won the love of a pure New York society girl, meantime protecting his mother from the insulting sneers of the idle rich and being made to suffer intensely by the apparent moral wreck of his dear little sister whom a rich scoundrel lured to the great city with false promises that he would make a fine lady of her. Never before had he studied the acting method of Wayne with a definite aim in view. Now he watched until he himself became the awkward country boy. He was primed with the Wayne manner, the appealing ingenuousness, the simple embarrassments; the manly regard for the old mother, when word came that Baird was ready for him in the new piece.
This drama was strikingly like the Wayne piece he had watched, at least in its beginning. Baird, in his striving for the better things, seemed at first to have copied his model almost too faithfully. Not only was Merton to be the awkward country boy in the little hillside farmhouse, but his mother and sister were like the other mother and sister.
Still, he began to observe differences. The little sister—played by the Montague girl—was a simple farm maiden as in the other piece, but the mother was more energetic. She had silvery hair and wore a neat black dress, with a white lace collar and a cameo brooch at her neck, and she embraced her son tearfully at frequent intervals, as had the other mother; but she carried on in her kitchen an active business in canning fruits and putting up jellies, which, sold to the rich people at the hotel, would swell the little fund that must be saved to pay the mortgage. Also, in the present piece, the country boy was to become a great inventor, and this was different. Merton felt that this was a good touch; it gave him dignity.
He appeared ready for work on the morning designated. He was now able to make up himself, and he dressed in the country-boy costume that had been provided. It was perhaps not so attractive a costume as Edgar Wayne had worn, consisting of loose-fitting overalls that came well above his waist and were fastened by straps that went over the shoulders; but, as Baird remarked, the contrast would be greater when he dressed in rich city clothes at the last. His hair, too, was no longer the slicked-back hair of Parmalee, but tousled in country disorder.
For much of the action of the new piece they would require an outside location, but there were some interiors to be shot on the lot. He forgot the ill-fitting overalls when shown his attic laboratory where, as an ambitious young inventor, sustained by the unfaltering trust of mother and sister, he would perfect certain mechanical devices that would bring him fame, fortune, and the love of a pure New York society girl. It was a humble little room containing a work-bench that held his tools and a table littered with drawings over which he bent until late hours of the night.
At this table, simple, unaffected, deeply earnest, he was shown as the dreaming young inventor, perplexed at moments, then, with brightening eyes, making some needful change in the drawings. He felt in these scenes that he was revealing a world of personality. And he must struggle to give a sincere interpretation in later scenes that would require more action. He would show Baird that he had not watched Edgar Wayne without profit.
Another interior was of the neat living room of the humble home. Here were scenes of happy family life with the little sister and the fond old mother. The Montague girl was a charming picture in her simple print dress and sunbonnet beneath which hung her braid of golden hair. The mother was a sweet old dear, dressed as Baird had promised. She early confided to Merton that she was glad her part was not to be a mopping part. In that case she would have had to wear knee-pads, whereas now she was merely, she said, to be a tired business woman.
Still another interior was of her kitchen where she busily carried on her fruit-canning activities. Pots boiled on the stove and glass jars were filled with her product. One of the pots, Merton noticed, the largest, had a tightly closed top from which a slender tube of copper went across one corner of the little room to where it coiled in a bucket filled with water, whence it discharged its contents into bottles.
This, it seemed, was his mother’s improved grape juice, a cooling drink to tempt the jaded palates of the city folks up at the big hotel.
The laboratory of the young inventor was abundantly filmed while the earnest country boy dreamed hopefully above his drawings or tinkered at metal devices on the work-bench. The kitchen in which his mother toiled was repeatedly shot, including close-ups of the old mother’s ingenious contrivances—especially of the closed boiler with its coil of copper tubing—by which she was helping to save the humble home.
And a scene in the neat living room with its old-fashioned furniture made it all too clear that every effort would be required to save the little home. The cruel money-lender, a lawyer with mean-looking whiskers, confronted the three shrinking inmates to warn them that he must have his money by a certain day or out they would go into the streets. The old mother wept at this, and the earnest boy took her in his arms. The little sister, terrified by the man’s rough words, also flew to this shelter, and thus he defied the intruder, calm, fearless, dignified. The money would be paid and the intruder would now please remember that, until the day named, this little home was their very own.
The scoundrel left with a final menacing wave of his gnarled hand; left the group facing ruin unless the invention could be perfected, unless Mother could sell an extraordinary quantity of fruit or improved grape juice to the city folks, or, indeed, unless the little sister could do something wonderful.
She, it now seemed, was confident she also could help. She stood apart from them and prettily promised to do something wonderful. She asked them to remember that she was no longer a mere girl, but a woman with a woman’s determination. They both patted the little thing encouragingly on the back.
The interiors possible on the Holden lot having been finished, they motored each day to a remote edge of the city where outside locations had been found for the humble farmhouse and the grand hotel. The farmhouse was excellently chosen, Merton thought, being the neat, unpretentious abode of honest, hard-working people; but the hotel, some distance off, was not so grand, he thought, as Baird’s new play seemed to demand. It was plainly a hotel, a wooden structure with balconies; but it seemed hardly to afford those attractions that would draw wealthier element from New York. He forebore to warn Baird of this, however, fearing to discourage a manager who was honestly striving for the serious in photodrama.
His first exterior scene saw him, with the help of Mother and little sister, loading the one poor motor car which the family possessed with Mother’s products. These were then driven to the hotel. The Montague girl drove the car, and scenes of it in motion were shot from a car that preceded them.
They arrived before the hotel; Merton was directed to take from the car an iron weight attached to a rope and running to a connection forward on the hood. He was to throw the weight to the ground, plainly with the notion that he would thus prevent the car from running away. The simple device was, in fact, similar to that used, at Gashwiler’s strict orders, on the delivery wagon back in Simsbury, for Gashwiler had believed that Dexter would run away if untethered. But of course it was absurd, Merton saw, to anchor a motor car in such a manner, and he was somewhat taken aback when Baird directed this action.
“It’s all right,” Baird assured him. “You’re a simple country boy, and don’t know any better, so do it plumb serious. You’ll be smart enough before the show’s over. Go ahead, get out, grab the weight, throw it down, and don’t look at it again, as if you did this every time. That’s it. You’re not being funny; just a simple country boy like Wayne was at first.” He performed the action, still with some slight misgiving. Followed scenes of brother and sister offering Mother’s wares to the city folks idling on the porch of the hotel. Each bearing a basket they were caught submitting the jellies and jams. The brother was laughed at, even sneered at, by the supercilious rich, the handsomely gowned women and the dissipated looking men. No one appeared to wish his jellies.
The little sister had better luck. The women turned from her, but the men gathered about her and quickly bought out the stock. She went to the car for more and the men followed her. To Merton, who watched these scenes, the dramatist’s intention was plain. These men did not really care for jellies and jams, they were attracted solely by the wild-rose beauty of the little country girl. And they were plainly the sort of men whose attentions could mean no good to such as she.
Left on the porch, he was now directed to approach a distinguished looking old gentleman, probably a banker and a power in Wall Street, who read his morning papers. Timidly he stood before this person, thrusting forward his basket. The old gentleman glanced up in annoyance and brutally rebuffed the country boy with an angry flourish of the paper he read.
“You’re hurt by this treatment,” called Baird, “and almost discouraged. You look back over your shoulder to where sister is doing a good business with her stuff, and you see the old mother back in her kitchen, working her fingers to the bone—we’ll have a flash of that, see?—and you try again. Take out that bottle in the corner of the basket, uncork it, and try again. The old man looks up-he’s smelled something. You hold the bottle toward him and you’re saying so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so, ‘Oh, Mister, if you knew how hard my poor old mother works to make this stuff! Won’t you please take a little taste of her improved grape juice and see if you don’t want to buy a few shillings’ worth’—so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so—see what I mean? That’s it, look pleading. Think how the little home depends on it.”
The old gentleman, first so rude, consented to taste the improved grape juice. He put the bottle to his lips and tilted it. A camera was brought up to record closely the look of pleased astonishment that enlivened his face. He arose to his feet, tilted the bottle again, this time drinking abundantly. He smacked his lips with relish, glanced furtively at the group of women in the background, caught the country boy by a sleeve and drew him farther along the porch.
“He’s telling you what fine stuff this grape juice is,” explained Baird; “saying that your mother must be a wonderful old lady, and he’ll drop over to meet her; and in the meantime he wants you to bring him all this grape juice she has. He’ll take it; she can name her own price. He hands you a ten dollar bill for the bottle he has and for another in the basket—that’s it, give it to him. The rest of the bottles are jams or something. You want him to take them, but he pushes them back. He’s saying he wants the improved grape juice or nothing. He shows a big wad of bills to show he can pay for it. You look glad now—the little home may be saved after all.”
The scene was shot. Merton felt that he carried it acceptably. He had shown the diffident pleading of the country boy that his mother’s product should be at least tasted, his frank rejoicing when the old gentleman approved of it. He was not so well satisfied with the work of the Montague girl as his innocent little sister. In her sale of Mother’s jellies to the city men, in her acceptance of their attentions, she appeared to be just the least bit bold. It seemed almost as if she wished to attract their notice. He hesitated to admit it, for he profoundly esteemed the girl, but there were even moments when, in technical language, she actually seemed to “vamp” these creatures who thronged about her to profess for her jams and jellies an interest he was sure they did not feel.
He wondered if Baird had made it plain to her that she was a very innocent little country girl who should be unpleasantly affected by these advances. The scene he watched shot where the little sister climbed back into the motor car, leered at by the four New York club-men, he thought especially distasteful. Surely the skirt of her print dress was already short enough. She needed not to lift it under this evil regard as she put her foot up to the step.
It was on the porch of the hotel, too, that he was to have his first scene with the New York society girl whose hand he won. She proved to be the daughter of the old gentleman who liked the improved grape juice. As Baird had intimated, she was a large girl; not only tall and stoutly built, but somewhat heavy of face. Baird’s heart must have been touched indeed when he consented to employ her, but Merton remembered her bedridden father and mother, the little crippled brother, the little sister who was also in poor health, and resolved to make their scenes together as easy for her as he could.
At their first encounter she appeared in a mannish coat and riding breeches, though she looked every inch a woman in this attire.
“She sees you, and it’s a case of love at first sight on her part,” explained Baird. “And you love her, too, only you’re a bashful country boy and can’t show it the way she can. Try out a little first scene now.”
Merton stood, his basket on his arm, as the girl approached him. “Look down,” called Baird, and Merton lowered his gaze under the ardent regard of the social butterfly. She tossed away her cigarette and came nearer. Then she mischievously pinched his cheek as the New York men had pinched his little sister’s. Having done this, she placed her hand beneath his chin and raised his face to hers.
“Now look up at her,” called Baird. “But she frightens you. Remember your country raising. You never saw a society girl before. That’s it—look frightened while she’s admiring you in that bold way. Now turn a little and look down again. Pinch his cheek once more, Lulu. Now, Merton, look up and smile, but kind of scared—you’re still afraid of her—and offer her a bottle of Ma’s preserves. Step back a little as you do it, because you’re kind of afraid of what she might do next. That’s fine. Good work, both of you.”
He was glad for the girl’s sake that Baird had approved the work of both. He had been afraid she was overdoing the New York society manner in the boldness of her advances to him, but of course Baird would know.
His conscience hurt him a little when the Montague girl added her praise to Baird’s for his own work. “Kid, you certainly stepped neat and looked nice in that love scene,” she warmly told him. He would have liked to praise her own work, but could not bring himself to. Perhaps she would grow more shrinking and modest as the drama progressed.
A part of the play now developed as he had foreseen it would, in that the city men at the hotel pursued the little sister to her own door-step with attentions that she should have found unwelcome. But even now she behaved in a way he could not approve. She seemed determined to meet the city men halfway. “I’m to be the sunlight arc of this hovel,” she announced when the city men came, one at a time, to shower gifts upon the little wild rose.
Later it became apparent that she must in the end pay dearly for her too-ready acceptance of these favours. One after another the four city men, whose very appearance would have been sufficient warning to most girls, endeavoured to lure her up to the great city where they promised to make a lady of her. It was a situation notoriously involving danger to the simple country girl, yet not even her mother frowned upon it.
The mother, indeed, frankly urged the child to let all of these kind gentlemen make a lady of her. The brother should have warned her in this extremity; but the brother was not permitted any share in these scenes. Only Merton Gill, in his proper person, seemed to feel the little girl was all too cordially inviting trouble.
He became confused, ultimately, by reason of the scenes not being taken consecutively. It appeared that the little sister actually left her humble home at the insistence of one of the villains, yet she did not, apparently, creep back months later broken in body and soul. As nearly as he could gather, she was back the next day. And it almost seemed as if later, at brief intervals, she allowed herself to start for the great city with each of the other three scoundrels who were bent upon her destruction. But always she appeared to return safely and to bring large sums of money with which to delight the old mother.
It was puzzling to Merton. He decided at last—he did not like to ask the Montague girl—that Baird had tried the same scene four times, and would choose the best of these for his drama.
Brother and sister made further trips to the hotel with their offerings, only the sister now took jams and jellies exclusively, which she sold to the male guests, while the brother took only the improved grape juice which the rich old New Yorker bought and generously paid for.
There were other scenes at the hotel between the country boy and the heavy-faced New York society girl, in which the latter was an ardent wooer. Once she was made to snatch a kiss from him as he stood by her, his basket on his arm. He struggled in her embrace, then turned to flee.
She was shown looking after him, laughing, carelessly slapping one leg with her riding crop.
“You’re still timid,” Baird told him. “You can hardly believe you have won her love.”
In some following scenes at the little farmhouse it became impossible for him longer to doubt this, for the girl frankly told her love as she lingered with him at the gate.
“She’s one of these new women,” said Baird. “She’s living her own life. You listen—it’s wonderful that this great love should have come to you. Let us see the great joy dawning in your eyes.”
He endeavoured to show this. The New York girl became more ardent. She put an arm about him, drew him to her. Slowly, almost in the manner of Harold Parmalee, as it seemed to him, she bent down and imprinted a long kiss upon his lips. He had been somewhat difficult to rehearse in this scene, but Baird made it all plain. He was still the bashful country boy, though now he would be awakened by love.
The girl drew him from the gate to her waiting automobile. Here she overcame a last reluctance and induced him to enter. She followed and drove rapidly off.
It was only now that Baird let him into the very heart of the drama.
“You see,” he told Merton, “you’ve watched these city folks; you’ve wanted city life and fine clothes for yourself; so, in a moment of weakness, you’ve gone up to town with this girl to have a look at the place, and it sort of took hold of you. In fact, you hit up quite a pace for awhile; but at last you go stale on it—” “The blight of Broadway,” suggested Merton, wondering if there could be a cabaret scene.
“Exactly,” said Baird. “And you get to thinking of the poor old mother and little sister back here at home, working away to pay off the mortgage, and you decide to come back. You get back on a stormy night; lots of snow and wind; you’re pretty weak. We’ll show you sort of fainting as you reach the door. You have no overcoat nor hat, and your city suit is practically ruined. You got a great chance for some good acting here, especially after you get inside to face the folks. It’ll be the strongest thing you’ve done, so far.”
It was indeed an opportunity for strong acting. He could see that. He stayed late with Baird and his staff one night and a scene of the prodigal’s return to the door of the little home was shot in a blinding snow-storm. Baird warmly congratulated the mechanics who contrived the storm, and was enthusiastic over the acting of the hero. Through the wintry blast he staggered, half falling, to reach the door where he collapsed. The light caught the agony on his pale face. He lay a moment, half-fainting, then reached up a feeble hand to the knob of the door.
It was one of the annoyances incident to screen art that he could not go in at that moment to finish his great scene. But this must be done back on the lot, and the scene could not be secured until the next day.
Once more he became the pitiful victim of a great city, crawling back to the home shelter on a wintry night. It was Christmas eve, he now learned. He pushed open the door of the little home and staggered in to face his old mother and the little sister. They sprang forward at his entrance; the sister ran to support him to the homely old sofa. He was weak, emaciated, his face an agony of repentance, as he mutely pled forgiveness for his flight.
His old mother had risen, had seemed about to embrace him fondly when he knelt at her feet, but then had drawn herself sternly up and pointed commandingly to the door. The prodigal, anguished anew at this repulse, fell weakly back upon the couch with a cry of despair. The little sister placed a pillow under his head and ran to plead with the mother. A long time she remained obdurate, but at last relented. Then she, too, came to fall upon her knees before the wreck who had returned to her.
Not many rehearsals were required for this scene, difficult though it was. Merton Gill had seized his opportunity. His study of agony expressions in the film course was here rewarded. The scene closed with the departure of the little sister. Resolutely, showing the light of some fierce determination, she put on hat and wraps, spoke words of promise to the stricken mother and son, and darted out into the night. The snow whirled in as she opened the door.
“Good work,” said Baird to Merton. “If you don’t hear from that little bit you can call me a Swede.”
Some later scenes were shot in the same little home, which seemed to bring the drama to a close. While the returned prodigal lay on the couch, nursed by the forgiving mother, the sister returned in company with the New York society girl who seemed aghast at the wreck of him she had once wooed. Slowly she approached the couch of the sufferer, tenderly she reached down to enfold him. In some manner, which Merton could not divine, the lovers had been reunited.
The New York girl was followed by her father—it would seem they had both come from the hotel—and the father, after giving an order for more of Mother’s grape juice, examined the son’s patents. Two of them he exclaimed with delight over, and at once paid the boy a huge roll of bills for a tenth interest in them.
Now came the grasping man who held the mortgage and who had counted upon driving the family into the streets this stormy Christmas eve. He was overwhelmed with confusion when his money was paid from an ample hoard, and slunk, shame-faced, out into the night. It could be seen that Christmas day would dawn bright and happy for the little group.
To Merton’s eye there was but one discord in this finale. He had known that the cross-eyed man was playing the part of hotel clerk at the neighbouring resort, but he had watched few scenes in which the poor fellow acted; and he surely had not known that this man was the little sister’s future husband. It was with real dismay that he averted his gaze from the embrace that occurred between these two, as the clerk entered the now happy home.
One other detail had puzzled him. This was the bundle to which he had clung as he blindly plunged through the storm. He had still fiercely clutched it after entering the little room, clasping it to his breast even as he sank at his mother’s feet in physical exhaustion and mental anguish, to implore her forgiveness. Later the bundle was placed beside him as he lay, pale and wan, on the couch.
He supposed this bundle to contain one of his patents; a question to Baird when the scene was over proved him to be correct. “Sure,” said Baird, “that’s one of your patents.” Yet he still wished the little sister had not been made to marry the cross-eyed hotel clerk.
And another detail lingered in his memory to bother him. The actress playing his mother was wont to smoke cigarettes when not engaged in acting. He had long known it. But he now seemed to recall, in that touching last scene of reconciliation, that she had smoked one while the camera actually turned. He hoped this was not so. It would mean a mistake. And Baird would be justly annoyed by the old mother’s carelessness.
They were six long weeks doing the new piece. The weeks seemed long to Merton Gill because there were so many hours, even days, of enforced idleness. To pass an entire day, his face stiff with the make-up, without once confronting a camera in action, seemed to him a waste of his own time and a waste of Baird’s money. Yet this appeared to be one of the unavoidable penalties incurred by those who engaged in the art of photodrama. Time was needed to create that world of painted shadows, so swift, so nicely consecutive when revealed, but so incoherent, so brokenly inconsequent, so meaningless in the recording.
How little an audience could suspect the vexatious delays ensuing between, say, a knock at a door and the admission of a visitor to a neat little home where a fond old mother was trying to pay off a mortgage with the help of her little ones. How could an audience divine that a wait of two hours had been caused because a polished city villain had forgotten his spats? Or that other long waits had been caused by other forgotten trifles, while an expensive company of artists lounged about in bored apathy, or smoked, gossiped, bantered?
Yet no one ever seemed to express concern about these waits. Rarely were their causes known, except by some frenzied assistant director, and he, after a little, would cease to be frenzied and fall to loafing calmly with the others. Merton Gill’s education in his chosen art was progressing. He came to loaf with the unconcern, the vacuous boredom, the practised nonchalance, of more seasoned artists.
Sometimes when exteriors were being taken the sky would overcloud and the sun be denied them for a whole day. The Montague girl would then ask Merton how he liked Sunny Cafeteria. He knew this was a jesting term that would stand for sunny California, and never failed to laugh.
The girl kept rather closely by him during these periods of waiting. She seemed to show little interest in other members of the company, and her association with them, Merton noted, was marked by a certain restraint. With them she seemed no longer to be the girl of free ways and speech. She might occasionally join a group of the men who indulged in athletic sports on the grass before the little farmhouse—for the actors of Mr. Baird’s company would all betray acrobatic tendencies in their idle moments—and he watched one day while the simple little country sister turned a series of hand-springs and cart-wheels that evoked sincere applause from the four New York villains who had been thus solacing their ennui.
But oftener she would sit with Merton on the back seat of one of the waiting automobiles. She not only kept herself rather aloof from other members of the company, but she curiously seemed to bring it about that Merton himself would have little contact with them. Especially did she seem to hover between him and the company’s feminine members. Among those impersonating guests at the hotel were several young women of rare beauty with whom he would have been not unwilling to fraternize in that easy comradeship which seemed to mark studio life. These were far more alluring than the New York society girl who wooed him and who had secured the part solely through Baird’s sympathy for her family misfortunes.
They were richly arrayed and charmingly mannered in the scenes he watched; moreover, they not too subtly betrayed a pleasant consciousness of Merton’s existence. But the Montague girl noticeably monopolized him when a better acquaintance with the beauties might have come about. She rather brazenly seemed to be guarding him. She was always there.
This very apparent solicitude of hers left him feeling pleasantly important, despite the social contacts it doubtless deprived him of. He wondered if the Montague girl could be jealous, and cautiously one day, as they lolled in the motor car, he sounded her.
“Those girls in the hotel scenes—I suppose they’re all nice girls of good family?” he casually observed.
“Huh?” demanded Miss Montague, engaged with a pencil at the moment in editing her left eyebrow. “Oh, that bunch? Sure, they all come from good old Southern families—Virginia and Indiana and those places.” She tightened her lips before the little mirror she held and renewed their scarlet. Then she spoke more seriously. “Sure, Kid, those girls are all right enough. They work like dogs and do the best they can when they ain’t got jobs. I’m strong for ‘em. But then, I’m a wise old trouper. I understand things. You don’t. You’re the real country wild rose of this piece. It’s a good thing you got me to ride herd on you. You’re far too innocent to be turned loose on a comedy lot.
“Listen, boy—” She turned a sober face to him—“the straight lots are fairly decent, but get this: a comedy lot is the toughest place this side of the bad one. Any comedy lot.”
“But this isn’t a comedy lot. Mr. Baird isn’t doing comedies any more, and these people all seem to be nice people. Of course some of the ladies smoke cigarettes—”
The girl had averted her face briefly, but now turned to him again. “Of course that’s so; Jeff is trying for the better things; but he’s still using lots of his old people. They’re all right for me, but not for you. You wouldn’t last long if mother here didn’t look out for you. I’m playing your dear little sister, but I’m playing your mother, too. If it hadn’t been for me this bunch would have taught you a lot of things you’d better learn some other way. Just for one thing, long before this you’d probably been hopping up your reindeers and driving all over in a Chinese sleigh.”
He tried to make something of this, but found the words meaningless. They merely suggested to him a snowy winter scene of Santa Claus and his innocent equipage. But he would intimate that he understood.
“Oh, I guess not,” he said knowingly. The girl appeared not to have heard this bit of pretense.
“On a comedy lot,” she said, again becoming the oracle, “you can do murder if you wipe up the blood. Remember that.”
He did not again refer to the beautiful young women who came from fine old Southern homes. The Montague girl was too emphatic about them.
At other times during the long waits, perhaps while they ate lunch brought from the cafeteria, she would tell him of herself. His old troubling visions of his wonder-woman, of Beulah Baxter the daring, had well-nigh faded, but now and then they would recur as if from long habit, and he would question the girl about her life as a double.
“Yeah, I could see that Baxter business was a blow to you, Kid. You’d kind of worshiped her, hadn’t you?”
“Well, I—yes, in a sort of way—”
“Of course you did; it was very nice of you—” She reached over to pat his hand. “Mother understands just how you felt, watching the films back there in Gooseberry “—He had quit trying to correct her as to Gashwiler and Simsbury. She had hit upon Gooseberry as a working composite of both names, and he had wearily come to accept it—“and I know just how you felt”—Again she patted his hand—“that night when you found me doing her stuff.”
“It did kind of upset me.”
“Sure it would! But you ought to have known that all these people use doubles when they can—men and women both. It not only saves ‘em work, but even where they could do the stuff if they had to—and that ain’t so often—it saves ‘em broken bones, and holding up a big production two or three months. Fine business that would be. So when you see a woman, or a man either, doing something that someone else could do, you can bet someone else is doing it. What would you expect? Would you expect a high-priced star to go out and break his leg?
“And at that, most of the doubles are men, even for the women stars, like Kitty Carson always carries one who used to be a circus acrobat. She couldn’t hardly do one of the things you see her doing, but when old Dan gets on her blonde transformation and a few of her clothes, he’s her to the life in a long shot, or even in mediums, if he keeps his map covered.
“Yeah, most of the doublers have to be men. I’ll hand that to myself. I’m about the only girl that’s been doing it, and that’s out with me hereafter, I guess, the way I seem to be making good with Jeff. Maybe after this I won’t have to do stunts, except of course some riding stuff, prob’ly, or a row of flips or something light. Anything heavy comes up—me for a double of my own.” She glanced sidewise at her listener. “Then you won’t like me any more, hey, Kid, after you find out I’m using a double?”
He had listened attentively, absorbed in her talk, and seemed startled by this unforeseen finish. He turned anxious eyes on her. It occurred to him for the first time that he did not wish the Montague girl to do dangerous things any more. “Say,” he said quickly, amazed at his own discovery, “I wish you’d quit doing all those—stunts, do you call ‘em?”
“Why?” she demanded. There were those puzzling lights back in her eyes as he met them. He was confused.
“Well, you might get hurt.”
“Oh!”
“You might get killed sometime. And it wouldn’t make the least difference to me, your using a double. I’d like you just the same.”
“I see; it wouldn’t be the way it was with Baxter when you found it out.”
“No; you—you’re different. I don’t want you to get killed,” he added, rather blankly. He was still amazed at this discovery.
“All right, Kid. I won’t,” she replied soothingly.
“I’ll like you just as much,” he again assured her, “no matter how many doubles you have.”
“Well, you’ll be having doubles yourself, sooner or later—and I’ll like you, too.” She reached over to his hand, but this time she held it. He returned her strong clasp. He had not liked to think of her being mangled perhaps by a fall into a quarry when the cable gave way—and the camera men would probably keep on turning!
“I always been funny about men,” she presently spoke again, still gripping his hand. “Lord knows I’ve seen enough of all kinds, bad and good, but I always been kind of afraid even of the good ones. Any one might not think it, but I guess I’m just natural-born shy. Man-shy, anyway.”
He glowed with a confession of his own. “You know, I’m that way, too. Girl-shy. I felt awful awkward when I had to kiss you in the other piece. I never did, really—” He floundered a moment, but was presently blurting out the meagre details of that early amour with Edwina May Pulver. He stopped this recital in a sudden panic fear that the girl would make fun of him. He was immensely relieved when she merely renewed the strength of the handclasp.
“I know. That’s the way with me. Of course I can put over the acting stuff, even vamping, but I’m afraid of men off-stage. Say, would you believe it, I ain’t ever had but one beau. That was Bert Stacy. Poor old Bert! He was lots older than me; about thirty, I guess. He was white all through. You always kind of remind me of him. Sort of a feckless dub he was, too; kind of honest and awkward—you know. He was the one got me doing stunts. He wasn’t afraid of anything. Didn’t know it was even in the dictionary. That old scout would go out night or day and break everything but his contract. I was twelve when I first knew him and he had me doing twisters in no time. I caught on to the other stuff pretty good. I wasn’t afraid, either, I’ll say that for myself. First I was afraid to show him I was afraid, but pretty soon I wasn’t afraid at all.
“We pulled off a lot of stuff for different people. And of course I got to be a big girl and three years ago when I was eighteen Bert wanted us to be married and I thought I might as well. He was the only one I hadn’t been afraid of. So we got engaged. I was still kind of afraid to marry any one, but being engaged was all right. I know we’d got along together, too, but then he got his with a motorcycle.
“Kind of funny. He’d do anything on that machine. He’d jump clean over an auto and he’d leap a thirty-foot ditch and he was all set to pull a new one for Jeff Baird when it happened. Jeff was going to have him ride his motorcycle through a plate-glass window. The set was built and everything ready and then the merry old sun don’t shine for three days. Every morning Bert would go over to the lot and wait around in the fog. And this third day, when it got too late in the afternoon to shoot even if the sun did show, he says to me, ‘c’mon, hop up and let’s take a ride down to the beach.’ So I hop to the back seat and off we start and on a ninety-foot paved boulevard what does Bert do but get caught in a jam? It was an ice wagon that finally bumped us over. I was shook up and scraped here and there. But Bert was finished. That’s the funny part. He’d got it on this boulevard, but back on the lot he’d have rode through that plate-glass window probably without a scratch. And just because the sun didn’t shine that day, I wasn’t engaged any more. Bert was kind of like some old sea-captain that comes back to shore after risking his life on the ocean in all kinds of storms, and falls into a duck-pond and gets drowned.”
She sat a long time staring out over the landscape, still holding his hand. Inside the fence before the farmhouse three of the New York villains were again engaged in athletic sports, but she seemed oblivious of these. At last she turned to him again with an illumining smile.
“But I was dead in love once before that, and that’s how I know just how you feel about Baxter. He was the preacher where we used to go to church. He was a good one. Pa copied a lot of his stuff that he uses to this day if he happens to get a preacher part. He was the loveliest thing. Not so young, but dark, with wonderful eyes and black hair, and his voice would go all through you. I had an awful case on him. I was twelve, and all week I used to think how I’d see him the next Sunday. Say, when I’d get there and he’d be working—doing pulpit stuff—he’d have me in kind of a trance.
“Sometimes after the pulpit scene he’d come down right into the audience and shake hands with people. I’d almost keel over if he’d notice me. I’d be afraid if he would and afraid if he wouldn’t. If he said ‘And how is the little lady this morning?’ I wouldn’t have a speck of voice to answer him. I’d just tremble all over. I used to dream I’d get a job workin’ for him as extra, blacking his shoes or fetching his breakfast and things.
“It was the real thing, all right. I used to try to pray the way he did—asking the Lord to let me do a character bit or something with him. He had me going all right. You must ‘a’ been that way about Baxter. Sure you were. When you found she was married and used a double and everything, it was like I’d found this preacher shooting hop or using a double in his pulpit stuff.”
She was still again, looking back upon this tremendous episode.
“Yes, that’s about the way I felt,” he told her. Already his affair with Mrs. Rosenblatt seemed a thing of his childhood. He was wondering, rather, if the preacher could have been the perfect creature the girl was now picturing him. It would not have displeased him to learn that this refulgent being had actually used a double in his big scenes, or had been guilty of mere human behaviour at odd moments. Probably, after all, he had been just a preacher. “Uncle Sylvester used to want me to be a preacher,” he said, with apparent irrelevance, “even if he was his own worst enemy.” He added presently, as the girl remained silent, “I always say my prayers at night.” He felt vaguely that this might raise him to the place of the other who had been adored. He was wishing to be thought well of by this girl.
She was aroused from her musing by his confession. “You do? Now ain’t that just like you? I’d have bet you did that. Well, keep on, son. It’s good stuff.”
Her serious mood seemed to pass. She was presently exchanging tart repartee with the New York villains who had perched in a row on the fence to be funny about that long—continued holding of hands in the motor car. She was quite unembarrassed, however, as she dropped the hand with a final pat and vaulted to the ground over the side of the car.
“Get busy, there!” she ordered. “Where’s your understander—where’s your top-mounter?” She became a circus ringmaster. “Three up and a roll for yours,” she commanded. The three villains aligned themselves on the lawn. One climbed to the shoulders of the other and a third found footing on the second. They balanced there, presently to lean forward from the summit. The girl played upon an imaginary snare drum with a guttural, throaty imitation of its roll, culminating in the “boom!” of a bass-drum as the tower toppled to earth. Its units, completing their turn with somersaults, again stood in line, bowing and smirking their acknowledgments for imagined applause.
The girl, a moment later, was turning hand-springs. Merton had never known that actors were so versatile. It was an astounding profession, he thought, remembering his own registration card that he had filled out at the Holden office. His age, height, weight, hair, eyes, and his chest and waist measures; these had been specified, and then he had been obliged to write the short “No” after ride, drive, swim, dance—to write “No” after “Ride?” even in the artistically photographed presence of Buck Benson on horseback!
Yet in spite of these disabilities he was now a successful actor at an enormous salary. Baird was already saying that he would soon have a contract for him to sign at a still larger figure. Seemingly it was a profession in which you could rise even if you were not able to turn hand-springs or were more or less terrified by horses and deep water and dance music.
And the Montague girl, who, he now fervently hoped, would not be killed while doubling for Mrs. Rosenblatt, was a puzzling creature. He thought his hand must still be warm from her enfolding of it, even when work was resumed and he saw her, with sunbonnet pushed back, stand at the gate of the little farmhouse and behave in an utterly brazen manner toward one of the New York clubmen who was luring her up to the great city. She, who had just confided to him that she was afraid of men, was now practically daring an undoubted scoundrel to lure her up to the great city and make a lady of her. And she had been afraid of all but a clergyman and a stunt actor! He wondered interestingly if she were afraid of Merton Gill. She seemed not to be.
On another day of long waits they ate their lunch from the cafeteria box on the steps of the little home and discussed stage names. “I guess we better can that ‘Clifford Armytage’ stuff,” she told him as she seriously munched a sandwich. “We don’t need it. That’s out. Merton Gill is a lot better name.” She had used “we” quite as if it were a community name.
“Well, if you think so—” he began regretfully, for Clifford Armytage still seemed superior to the indistinction of Merton Gill.
“Sure, it’s a lot better,” she went on. “That ‘Clifford Armytage’—say, it reminds me of just another such feckless dub as you that acted with us one time when we all trouped in a rep show, playing East Lynne and such things. He was just as wise as you are, and when he joined out at Kansas City they gave him a whole book of the piece instead of just his sides. He was a quick study, at that, only he learned everybody’s part as well as his own, and that slowed him. They put him on in Waco, and the manager was laid up, so they told him that after the third act he was to go out and announce the bill for the next night, and he learned that speech, too.
“He got on fine till the big scene in the third act. Then he went bloody because that was as far as he’d learned, so he just left the scene cold and walked down to the foots and bowed and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for your attendance here this evening and to-morrow night we shall have the honour of presenting Lady Audley’s Secret.’
“With that he gave a cold look to the actors back of him that were gasping like fish, and walked off. And he was like you in another way because his real name was Eddie Duffy, and the lovely stage name he’d picked out was Clyde Maltravers.”
“Well, Clifford Armytage is out, then,” Merton announced, feeling that he had now buried a part of his dead self in a grave where Beulah Baxter, the wonder-woman, already lay interred. Still, he was conscious of a certain relief. The stage name had been bothersome.
“It ain’t as if you had a name like mine,” the girl went on. “I simply had to have help.”
He wondered what her own name was. He had never heard her called anything but the absurd and undignified “Flips.” She caught the question he had looked.
“Well, my honest-to-God name is Sarah Nevada Montague; Sarah for Ma and Nevada for Reno where Ma had to stop off for me—she was out of the company two weeks—and if you ever tell a soul I’ll have the law on you. That was a fine way to abuse a helpless baby, wasn’t it?”
“But Sarah is all right. I like Sarah.”
“Do you, Kid?” She patted his hand. “All right, then, but it’s only for your personal use.”
“Of course the Nevada—” he hesitated. “It does sound kind of like a geography lesson or something. But I think I’ll call you Sarah, I mean when we’re alone.” “Well, that’s more than Ma ever does, and you bet it’ll never get into my press notices. But go ahead if you want to.”
“I will, Sarah. It sounds more like a true woman than ‘Flips.’”
“Bless the child’s heart,” she murmured, and reached across the lunch box to pat his hand again.
“You’re a great little patter, Sarah,” he observed with one of his infrequent attempts at humour.
On still another day, while they idled between scenes, she talked to him about salaries and contracts, again with her important air of mothering him.
“After this picture,” she told him, “Jeff was going to sew you up with a long-time contract, probably at a hundred and fifty per. But I’ve told him plain I won’t stand for it. No five-year contract, and not any contract at that figure. Maybe three years at two hundred and fifty, I haven’t decided yet. I’ll wait and see—” she broke off to regard him with that old puzzling light far back in her eyes—“wait and see how you get over in these two pieces.”
“But I know you’ll go big, and so does Jeff. We’ve caught you in the rushes enough to know that. And Jeff’s a good fellow, but naturally he’ll get you for as little as he can. He knows all about money even if he don’t keep Yom Kippur. So I’m watching over you, son—I’m your manager, see? And I’ve told him so, plain. He knows he’ll have to give you just what you’re worth. Of course he’s entitled to consideration for digging you up and developing you, but a three-year contract will pay him out for that. Trust mother.”
“I do,” he told her. “I’d be helpless without you. It kind of scares me to think of getting all that money. I won’t know what to do with it.”
“I will; you always listen to me, and you won’t be camping on the lot any more. And don’t shoot dice with these rough-necks on the lot.” “I won’t,” he assured her. “I don’t believe in gambling.” He wondered about Sarah’s own salary, and was surprised to learn that it was now double his own. It was surprising, because her acting seemed not so important to the piece as his. “It seems like a lot of money for what you have to do,” he said.
“There,” she smiled warmly, “didn’t I always say you were a natural-born trouper? Well, it is a lot of money for me, but you see I’ve helped Jeff dope out both of these pieces. I’m not so bad at gags—I mean the kind of stuff he needs in these serious dramas. This big scene of yours, where you go off to the city and come back a wreck on Christmas night—that’s mine. I doped it out after the piece was started—after I’d had a good look at the truck driver that plays opposite you.”
Truck driver? It appeared that Miss Montague was actually applying this term to the New York society girl who in private life was burdened with an ailing family. He explained now that Mr. Baird had not considered her ideal for the part, but had chosen her out of kindness.
Again there flickered far back in her eyes those lights that baffled him. There was incredulity in her look, but she seemed to master it.
“But I think it was wonderful of you,” he continued, “to write that beautiful scene. It’s a strong scene, Sarah. I didn’t know you could write, too. It’s as good as anything Tessie Kearns ever did, and she’s written a lot of strong scenes.”
Miss Montague seemed to struggle with some unidentified emotion. After a long, puzzling gaze she suddenly said: “Merton Gill, you come right here with all that make-up on and give mother a good big kiss!”
Astonishingly to himself, he did so in the full light of day and under the eyes of one of the New York villains who had been pretending that he walked a tight-rope across the yard. After he had kissed the girl, she seized him by both arms and shook him. “I’d ought to have been using my own face in that scene,” she said. Then she patted his shoulder and told him that he was a good boy.
The pretending tight-rope walker had paused to applaud. “Your act’s flopping, Bo,” said Miss Montague. “Work fast.” Then she again addressed the good boy: “Wait till you’ve watched that scene before you thank me,” she said shortly.
“But it’s a strong scene,” he insisted.
“Yes,” she agreed. “It’s strong.”
He told her of the other instance of Baird’s kindness of heart.
“You know I was a little afraid of playing scenes with the cross-eyed man, but Mr. Baird said he was trying so hard to do serious work, so I wouldn’t have him discharged. But shouldn’t you think he’d save up and have his eyes straightened? Does he get a very small salary?”
The girl seemed again to be harassed by conflicting emotions, but mastered them to say, “I don’t know exactly what it is, but I guess he draws down about twelve fifty a week.”
“Only twelve dollars and fifty cents a week!”
“Twelve hundred and fifty,” said the girl firmly.
“Twelve hundred and fifty dollars a week!” This was monstrous, incredible. “But then why doesn’t he have his eyes—”
Miss Montague drew him to her with both her capable arms. “My boy, my boy!” she murmured, and upon his painted forehead she now imprinted a kiss of deep reverence. “Run along and play,” she ordered. “You’re getting me all nervous.” Forthwith she moved to the centre of the yard where the tight-rope walker still endangered his life above the heads of a vast audience.
She joined him. She became a performer on the slack wire. With a parasol to balance her, she ran to the centre of an imaginary wire that swayed perilously, and she swung there, cunningly maintaining a precarious balance. Then she sped back to safety at the wire’s end, threw down her parasol, caught the handkerchief thrown to her by the first performer, and daintily touched her face with it, breathing deeply the while and bowing.
He thought Sarah was a strange child—“One minute one thing and the next minute something else.”